The invention concerns an optical component exchanger and a method for exchanging an optical component in particular of an infrared spectrometer.
An apparatus and a method of this kind are known in the art from the research grade vacuum FT (fourier transform) IR (infrared) spectrometer produced by Bio-Rad Digilab Division of Cambridge, Mass., USA. The known spectrometer system exhibits a vacuum infrared spectrometer in particular for spectroscopy in the far infrared (600 to 10 cm.sup.-1). The system includes a set of mylar beam-splitters as well as a metal mesh beam-splitter to give a wide coverage of the entire far IR range. The beam-splitters are easily positioned and require minimal change-over time. A simple glove box arrangement is utilized to exchange the beam-splitters without opening the optical system to atmosphere.
The known optical exchange apparatus has the disadvantage that the process of exchanging the optical component must essentially be carried out by hand using a bulky glove box arrangement. Moreover once the optical component is removed, the storage of said component must be carried out within the glove box or subsequent transfer of the component to a separate storage facility must be undertaken. This, in turn, requires additional operational steps and increases the time and consequently the related expense associated with the exchange procedure.
It is therefore the purpose of the present invention to present an exchange apparatus for an optical component, in particular a component of a FT-IR spectrometer, which allows for a simple and efficient exchange of the optical component without having the component exposed to the ambient atmosphere.